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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31758 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I read an article from Zerohedge recently that listed a bunch of conspiracy theories that will be proven true on 2023. After well every conspiracy theory last year seems to have been proven true. I can’t find the article right now. I read thru their list and thought all the conspiracies were dumb and basically every conspiracy theory that seemed to be likely true has already been proven true.

I have two questions?

  1. What conspiracy theories still exists that haven’t moved into the >50% now think is likely true.

  2. Presuppose theirs a potential snitch who has all the documents and proof to show the world that the conspiracy your running in fact does exists. Is there any reason to kill him or you should just let the culture war battle happen and not worry about going to jail etc.

Maybe my mind isn’t curious enough to see new conspiracies but it does feel like a lot of them were checkmarked true the last year.

I read an article from Zerohedge recently that listed a bunch of conspiracy theories that will be proven true on 2023.

Top 10 Conspiracy Theories That Will Be Validated In 2023

Bad article, worthy of clickbait site full of ads and popup videos. Either subpar shitcoating attempt, or just something to get more clicks and retweets.

#1 is already proven beyond reasonable doubt, what else would you need?

Open confession on live TV "Yeah, we did it, we laid the trap and lured the MAGAtards in, it worked perfectly! MUHEWHEHEHEH!"

#2

The evidence is mounting that the vaccines themselves may have been as deadly and damaging as the virus

If true, we would observe it in on total excess death statistics. Do we observe it?

#3 Old Bircher stuff from 1950's with serial numbers filed off. (Dwight Eisenhower Joe Biden is dedicated and conscious agent of the international communist conspiracy!)

In real world, US is moving hard and fast to isolate China and deny them access to commanding heights of current cutting edge technologies. @DaseindustriesLtd wrote about it at length.

#4 Who cares?

#5 Nothing of importance for anyone, except for Donald's ego.

#6 Who cares?

#7 Even Russian propaganda moved forward from "biolabs" to satanism. Yes, Ukraine is developed country with universities, industry and research labs. If you were searching for Ukraine on map of Africa, you were looking at the wrong place.

#8 Pedophilia again. Conservatives talk about "liberal mainstreaming of pedophilia" for decades, while pedo panic grows stronger and stronger, "pedos" are universal and approved target of hatred while definition of "pedo" grows more expansive every year (when was the first time you heard about things like "age gap"?)

Future is not free love hippy commune where anything goes:

"25 years old man and 5 years old woman? Love is love! How sweet!"

Future is:

"45 years old man and 25 years old woman? Age gap is age gap! LYNCH THE PEDO!"

#9 Matrix is works of fiction unconnected to anything in reality. Human beings are not batteries. Of the grab bag of unrelated things cited here, some empower the state, most of them are opportunities to empower individuals(who know how to use them). There is no one big plan to "collectivize the world", there are many plans to privatize everything that is still for grabs.

#10 Everyone with basic awareness already knows it.

(it does not include wannabe domestic terrorists )

edit: link fixed

Adrenochrome.

I have heard exactly zero medical evidence that torturing children (physically or psychologically) causes their adrenal glands to produce a substance which reduces or reverses human aging, boosts cognition by at least twenty IQ points, while causing a chemical high better than any other drug.

I have seen exactly zero evidence that the political, economic, entertainment, and old money elites spend billions yearly on obtaining it from evil secret facilities on private islands (Epstein) and in corrupt countries (Ukraine) where kidnapped trafficked children are raped by elites for sexual rewards and blackmail material in the process of harvesting it.

It sounds like a new class war variation on old anti-semitic blood libels created to spark revolutions and pogroms, a toxic climate of ethnic warfare which culminated in the Holocaust.

It also sounds like a memetic trap for conspiracy theorists: secret knowledge, high detail, plausible motivations for those who don’t understand how real moneyed power could be so inhuman, and so on.

So no, I don’t believe adrenochrome exists. The stakes would be too high and someone with a conscience would have provided proof by this point.

I also sincerely hope it’s not true. It would be truly horrific if true, and would require a much tighter-lipped and powerful conspiracy than any we’ve ever seen exposed.

This is the first time I have heard this conspiracy theory and the thing I don’t understand is if something existed with these properties wouldn’t someone have figured out how to make it synthetically? I mean we can make insulin, somatropin, and plenty of other fabulously complex drugs with less incentive.

The real derivative called adrenochrome in medical science can easily be synthesized. It does indeed produce hallucinations, reportedly similar to mescaline. EDIT: reports with a higher trustworthiness deny most reported effects. /EDIT. It has a toxic breakdown byproduct, being unstable.

The QAnon variant theory built on Uncle Duke’s drug diary is that it isn’t actually the compound with miraculous properties which can only be harvested theough demonic acts. The real adrenochrome is partly science, partly woo interdimensional spiritual drug, a substance which would be quite at home in the Doom video game series.

The myth was popularized by Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

Adrenochrome exists. It is a pretty boring compound, structurally related to adrenaline, was tried in studies and found useless. Just like adrenaline, we could easily synthesize it chemically if it was found useful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenochrome

But failure to research such a simply fact unites both conspiracy theorists and their critics :)

Also consider: we have a Drug War in this country. We have lists of chemicals that are banned because of their psychoactive effects. We have lists of chemicals that are banned because they are too similar to chemicals on the first list and thus might be psychoactive. Florida notoriously passed a drug-control act so wide-ranging it banned one of the amino acids in cheese as a controlled substance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyramine#Status_in_Florida ).

Adrenochrome, as far as I know, is not on any of these lists. If people as notoriously paranoid as the US drug warriors never got around to banning adrenochrome, it probably doesn't do much of anything.

According to one daring psychonaut, its effects are an hour’s light sedation and a minute’s light euphoria. No derealization or hallucinations.

It also sounds like a memetic trap for conspiracy theorists

That's because it is. It was shilled on 4chan and facebook pretty obviously. It's a "whacky" conspiracy theory designed to mask a very real thing, infusion of blood from young people really helps. None of that adrenochrome bullshit.

I nominate that the FBI instigates a significant percentage of domestic terror or seemingly random attacks, that this includes lots of things there doesn’t happen to be any evidence for(that is, not things like the OKC bombing or Vegas shooting which already have question marks, or like the Michigan kidnapping plot) possibly including sandy hook, and that this is known to higher figures in the DOJ who do nothing about it.

I mean, this is only not yet proven true if people totally forget that they sent a task force to investigate a garage door pull-cord.

Which granted most people certainly have forgotten, or else remember as an awful hate crime that totally happened.

I meant more along the lines of ‘most actual mass murders and terror attacks leaving actual people dead are incited by the FBI’ than ‘most things the FBI investigates as hate crimes are really ethnonarcisist pareidolia’.

I nominate these:

  1. Joe Biden is the Big Guy. I mean, everybody thinks that, but there's no proof. I expect it will show up eventually.

  2. There's something that covid vaccine does to athletic young males that makes it significantly riskier than presented (which was pretty much zero risk)

  3. Facebook and Google (YouTube) are as controlled by US government censors as Twitter was, and regularly and with minimal filtering execute governmental requests to suppress information and dissidents

  4. Ray Epps confirmed to have been working for US government

  5. We learn China has been lying about their covid stats and the real numbers of deaths are horrendous and all their zero-covid strategy was a colossal atrocity

We learn China has been lying about their covid stats and the real numbers of deaths are horrendous and all their zero-covid strategy was a colossal atrocity

Way to verify it would be survey representative sample of mainland Chinese citizens, ask them how many of their family members died or vanished vithout trace during early 2020.

This is standard approach, but there are numerous possible problems with it (starting with different definitions of "family" in different cultures)

  1. What does it mean “the Big Guy”?

  2. The data is already quite strong about this. It has already been a warning in vaccine information for more than a year. What we don't know, how much of a risk it is. Probably not that great in absolute numbers. However, the benefit from vaccine in young people is also not that great. We don't know if the benefits overweigh the risks.

  3. Very likely indeed.

  4. Who is Ray Epps?

  5. I don't think that China lying about covid matters. Nothing about covid really matters anymore. Most stats are only meant to scare people without true understanding how risks are/were age stratified. It took 3 years for European Medicines agency to finally say that covid risk increases exponentially by age even though we learned it within the first 2 weeks of pandemic.

  • There was a person mentioned in Hunter Biden communications under the alias "the Big Guy" to which, as the communications allude, went part of the profits. It is widely assumed that it is Joe Biden, and he was a knowing partner in Hunter's dealings, but so far there's no direct proof of that AFAIK.

  • Ray Epps is a person who took active participation in the events of January 6, by his own admission "I orchestrated it", and was seen inciting certain violent actions, but who for reasons unknown is treated in a radically different way from all other protestors by Democrats, and not only his prosecution was dropped without any plausible explanation, but he was invited to testify in front of Jan 6 commission, and during that testimony the interrogators basically fed him (pun!) the answers. It is suggested by some that the reason for all that is that he is one of the many FBI informants that we know were present at the scene (and in general most right organizations, such as Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, are infested with FBI informants, which makes it plausible that there should be some at the scene on Jan 6) or an agent of some other governmental agency.

Thanks for the explanation.

I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.

Ray Epps is more interesting. I think the worry about January 6 being a potential coup is overblown. Recently Germany had arrested a bunch of people for plotting a coup and restoring monarchy. The media described them as a group of senile men who had got hold of weapons, i.e., nothing serious and all immediately forgot about it. The same is probably true about January 6 except they were not seniors but younger fantasists and some of them had guns (but everybody has a gun in the US). It should not be paid such an attention. Sadly some people died in the crowds but fatal traffic accidents also happen and it is time to forget about this.

The only difference I can see is that Trump was tweeting something and the irrational hate of Trump has been a feature of the US politics. I am not saying that Trump is a good man but he certainly is not guilty of all the outrageous things he is accused of. Whatever Ray Epps' role was, it doesn't change the fact that it was just a spontaneous crowd gathered in naive beliefs, probably instigated by social media viral messaging.

Whatever Ray Epps' role was, it doesn't change the fact that it was just a spontaneous crowd gathered in naive beliefs, probably instigated by social media viral messaging.

Sure, but the question here is that there were some acts of violence and unlawful behavior. They are greatly exaggerated and overblown by the media (as expected) but who initiated them? Most people that are prosecuted are found guilty of the most mundane things akin to "walking where the government told you not to walk". However, we know some people did instigate the violence. Who were those people? We also know the FBI had informants there, and the FBI is not shy of using provocation tactics (see Whitmer "kidnapping" plot) - so were the FBI informants among those who instigated the violence, in order to turn a peaceful protest into something they could make a Congressional commission out of? If there were such people, we'd expect them to not be prosecuted, but instead to be used as vehicles for promoting such agenda.

And here we see a person who seemingly took part in instigating violence, was not prosecuted and is being used as a vehicle to promote the Dems agenda. If we learned he was working for the FBI (or any other part of the government apparatus) - it would confirm that the suspicions above are indeed true. Otherwise, we do not have a plausible explanation of why Epps was treated completely different from what we expect and see other protestors, often not guilty of anything more than walking through a space the government didn't like them to walk, are treated.

  1. There were other messages saying to use code for Joe Biden as they were paranoid about Op Sec.

  2. Hunter mentioned in a message to Hunter’s kid that the kid is lucky that Hunter doesn’t take money for the kid like Joe does vis-à-vis Hunter.

  3. We know they commingled funds.

  4. Finally there is testimony by Tony B.

So far, the evidence heavily suggests Joe was invoked.

I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.

One of Hunter's (former) business associates who was on the email chain in question was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and specifically confirmed that in this case "Big Guy" was a sort of code when referring to Biden Sr. It would have been weird for them to all call him "Dad"!

It might be. Tucker Carlson is not very reliable though.

Why do you say that?

tucker isn't the source, former business associate tony bobulinski is the source

tucker's reliability is mostly irrelevant here, we're not relying on "unidentified source promise"

Tucker Carlson is not very reliable though.

like what?

I don't know who Tony Bobulinski is and how trustable he is. The fact that Tucker quotes him doesn't add anything. It is just mostly gossip which may be correct or may not. It doesn't update my priors much.

Maybe I am going the way that Taleb calls via negativa. I am careful and exclude things I don't have enough positive information about. That eliminates most of disaster modes (of course, it also makes me to lose some potentially great deals too).

More comments

Compared to whom?

Practically everyone who is qualified to speak about this matter.

More comments

What does it mean “the Big Guy”?

If you want to learn about American scandals, British tabloid gutter press is the way to go ;-)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11056505/Hunter-Biden-associate-referred-Big-Guy-SECOND-message.html

Who is Ray Epps?

Big Trump fan from Arizona, who traveled all the way to DC to meet his idol, and then, instead to listening to his speech, engaged in highly sus behavior.

Meet Ray Epps

Meet Ray Epps, Part 2

This means Epps came to the Trump speech early in the morning with the sole intention of recruiting a mob to follow on the heels of the Capitol breach team he would personally oversee while Trump was speaking—the very breach team we have covered in this report whose operators would remove the fencing, signage and barricades before the masses would arrive at the Capitol.

Let’s put this all in context:

Ray Epps flew 2,300 miles from Phoenix, Arizona to Washington, DC for a Trump rally, supposedly as a Trump supporter.

Epps arrived at the rally entrance more than two hours early, camped out to constantly shout recruiting instructions about coming to the Capitol after the speech, but then skipped out on the speech itself, because he was too busy personally orchestrating the Big Bang Breach Team that kicked off the riot and tore down the fencing, barricades and signage, which made rallygoers totally unaware of the legal booby trap they had walked into.

For 5, what's your explanation for why their reported numbers are shooting up now? To me it always seemed likely that they were covering up their real numbers but I don't see why they would stop that now, whereas if they were telling the truth and have a mostly COVID-naive population then it would make sense that at some point they would have to pay the piper.

I'm going to use another conspiracy theory to explain this one: several of the Vietnam vets I grew up with claim the wall is missing names. That vastly more Americans died over there, but that only some names made the wall. But by randomizing it, it just becomes a bunch of guys who know one guy who was missed, so the natural reaction is oh well it was an oversight, what's one more one way or another, but that it adds up to thousands. But 59,000 is a big enough number that thousands more can get lost in the sauce.

I've never looked into it beyond that, but a similar dynamic might work here. ChiComms are increasing the number of reported dead, to "catch up" to unreported dead, so that the numbers get big enough that they're hard to check.

This sounds like POW-MIA conspiracy theory mangled in retelling.

TL;DR: many more Americans than officially announced were captured by North Vietnam. US government knew about it, and deliberately let them die in captivity.

Mainstream history take

Conspiracy theory take

Oh the POW/MiA conspiracies are in my view true, and separate.

What I'm saying is that I was told directly, riding to a trade show with a one time Green Beret, that so and so got blown to bits in front of him and the name isn't on the wall. This is the same story I've heard from multiple vets.

Now, it's not impossible they were confused! They missed the name, the name he went under to his buddies wasn't his legal name that's listed on the wall ("James <estranged father's name>" legally; "Jimmy <Mother's name>" to his friends), the guy didn't die but was grievously wounded and 40 years of alcohol have conflated complex and traumatic memories, or they're flat lying to make a point about Vietnam. But the dynamic is the same: you have one guy claiming a few names are missing out of 59,000; well it's probably just an error and the overall narrative remains true. But how many errors can you cover up before the narrative itself is false?

Idk what that number that allows Chinese COVID dead to disappear into the ether would be. But it's more than they were reporting prior. At that point, a smart journalist could have collected enough names to throw numbers off. Now they need a big enough number that reporting its falsehood becomes difficult, impossible without setting off government alarm bells. Can you gather 100,000 anecdotes without getting into trouble in China? I doubt it.

Because it's getting too big to hide? Especially once full lockdown is removed, people start talking to each other and notice some people are missing. If the official statistics (arbitrary example) says there are 100 people dead in the whole China, and you know 20 people with dead relatives just in your city, it's impossible to believe. But if you add up a bit more, then it becomes more plausible.

I mean, I don't have any data now, right now it's just a suspicion, a theory and a gut feeling. We'll see.

Given how much more quickly it swept through the rest of the world, it doesn't seem plausible that it's been raging for two years in China and is just now getting too big to hide.

We learn China has been lying about their covid stats and the real numbers of deaths are horrendous and all their zero-covid strategy was a colossal atrocity

I think it's more likely that COVID just genuinely doesn't do a hell of a lot even if you 'let it rip', especially if you don't use the absurd attribution criteria that was used to justify the lockdowns.

Good list and what I was looking for.

  1. Agree on but their is plausible deniability now. But if proven people will just say we knew that all the time

  2. Hamlin might do this. But it’s certainly not the initial diagnosis. I also think COVID itself causes damaging, but repeated boosting probably causes damage that doesn’t need to be done

  3. Think this is assumed

  4. Lowest confidence here but there is something odd going on with him

  5. I think this is false.

  1. I actually find this highly unlikely while also being substantively true. Joe Biden doesn't need cash out of these deals because Joe Biden never pays for anything anyway.
  1. God will that be horrifying to learn.

I don't see why Biden needs cash less than Clintons, and Clintons took money from basically anybody.

Along the lines of your first point, Biden could both be the Big Guy and also not have any substantive involvement with the deal. Hunter could well have entirely invented his dad's interest in an attempt to make everything seem juicier to his collaborators and then taken his dad's share for himself, and no one is the wiser.

Getting involved with these things (particularly given that he knows his son is not a reliable agent) isn't something Biden would obviously do. On the other hand, obfuscation to protect his only son after the fact instead of throwing him under the bus is something I'd absolutely expect.

(Even if more evidence does come out linking Biden, this is probably the backup story that will be the party line.)

FYI, something went wrong with your formatting and both numbers show up as "1." for me.

Each point is as important if not more important than the proceeding point.

Well 1 was one and the rest would fit the second 1, wouldn't they?

I just wasn't sure what you meant and thought it was the Markdown formatting messing up your list, so I thought you might want to edit to clarify. Not sure what you even did to get two "1."s as


1. foo

42. bar

renders as


1. foo

2. bar

no matter what number I replace "42" with.

The rdrama code base has "View Source" as a feature which is kind of neat. The original comment:


1. I actually find this highly unlikely while also being substantively true. Joe Biden doesn't need cash out of these deals because Joe Biden never pays for anything anyway. 


5) God will that be horrifying to learn.

Presuppose theirs a potential snitch who has all the documents and proof to show the world that the conspiracy your running in fact does exists. Is there any reason to kill him or you should just let the culture war battle happen and not worry about going to jail etc.

If anything, the best defence would be to signal boost a bunch of incredibly stupid and lunatic conspiracy theories to poison the well against the notion of conspiracy in general. Then when this snitch brings forth his reveal, you just liken him to those crazy people who believe in lizard overlords and alien invasions. Everyone knows conspiracies don't exist, after all!

They tried that. Problem is the incredibly stupid and lunatic conspiracy theories turned out to be too close to the truth. The government is reading all your email! And tracking who you are calling! And chemicals in the water are turning the frogs gay!

  1. Kind of drawing a blank. There’s got to be good ones out there about why Trump held on to so many classified documents, but I can’t think of any fun ones. Predictably, trying to google “best conspiracy theories” basically guarantees getting ones over the 50% mark.

  2. I assume the reason to kill your snitch is the same as whatever reason you remained secret up till 2023.

My mind is blanking, what conspiracies were proven true last year? Maybe Twitter working with the IC?

FWIW I believe the DePape gay sex conspiracy 100% but I doubt it will ever be proven more than it is

groan...as usual ZH high on hype, low on delivery

The scope of China’s control over the U.S. government will become clearer.

How is this a conspiracy? It's just an opinion . Pundits have been arguing this forever. A conspiracy involves an actual event having occurred by conspirators, not some vague supposition about a trend. The rest of the article is the usual culture war agitprop and flotsam.

The fortune cookie approach.

Is this the article?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-10-conspiracy-theories-will-be-validated-2023

Honestly, they mostly seem pretty stupid, barely worthy of the name conspiracy theory. Generously I see four things that could even be considered conspiracy theories, with one of those being utterly boring and banal ("The true nature of David DePape’s relationship with Paul Pelosi will be revealed"). Most is just cranky grousing ("The Left’s plans to normalize and mainstream pedophilia will come to fruition." and "The World Economic Forum will lead the way in trying to turn humans into glorified Matrix-style batteries.")

My conspiracy theory predictions:

  1. Not much will budge on the COVID-origin story, but there'll be one or two decent pieces of evidence that increase the likelihood of a lab leak. Documents will come out showing approval at the highest levels for GoF research. But everyone's bored of COVID by now so no one cares.

  2. GOP House will investigate Hunter Biden, turn up a bunch of evidence of various quality that he was engaged in corruption, but with no smoking gun that the Big Guy was involved, with most testimony being tainted by the fact that everyone Hunter was surrounded by with firsthand knowledge is obviously sketch as fuck.

  3. Nothing news on the government "maybe there are UFOs!" story.

yeah, a terrible article . Even if the 'truth' did come out, whatever that is, no one would accept it unless it confirmed one's preexisting beliefs. like what if the moon landing was actually real, they wouldn't be convinced anyway. The burden of proof is impossibly high.

I'm sure if Mr Durden had to assign probabilities to "The World Economic Forum will lead the way in trying to turn humans into glorified Matrix-style batteries" and "The scope of China’s control over the U.S. government will become clearer", he'd be more rational. Although the 'by tyler durden' bit isn't as funny when followed by 'Authored by Ben Sellers via Headline USA'. The comments make him look reasonable.

The term 'conspiracy theory', when used, usually just means "crazy idea like aliens". "Thing that calls a conspiracy theory ended up being true" doesn't mean elite pedo aliens are more likely.

Yes correct. Maybe this is a dumb topic but felt like something similar to New Year predictions. A lot of the prior ones were things you were banned for mentioning on social media but are now sort of accepted. Social media seems a lot better now.

Sort of agree with your first two. Though I think everyone around a Hunter is “sketch as fuck” is closer to everyone around Hunter “has been thoroughly thrown into the culture war meat grinder”.

Which conspiracy theories do you think were proven true in 2022? Can you link to examples of them being predicted beforehand?

Off the top of my head

  1. Shadow banning etc on twitter. Heavy bias. Federal government actively engaged in censorship. And a step farther than I expected that the Feds were paying twitter.

  2. Lab leak. Well not proven but it went from crazy town to generally accepted as plausible or possible by most.

  3. Masks work. Well maybe this is just pure culture warred at this point.

  4. Hunter Biden laptop. Not proven point is probably Joe directly getting paid. But that’s culture warred to death until the left doesn’t need Joe.

  5. Lourdon County school tranny (or fake tranny) rape case

  6. Multiple things related to vaccines

  7. Ivermectin is horse paste that will kill you. Believe the government had to retract a lot of this lately and in court. Not sure this stuff works but wasn’t life threatening to take.

There’s probably more but off top of head.

I think current conspiracy theories would be the west far more actively engaged in provoking Russia. I think this is false. Involved as always but more of a minor player.

Maybe one that will pop off soon with Hamlin is an acceptance that the vaccine or more specifically multiple boosters is particular damaging to young males. I’m getting a feeling Hamlins heart was damaged either from vaccine or COVID. He’s still in hospital while Chris Pronged got hit in the chest with a 100 mph puck and came back 2 days later a for a game after losing his heart beat.

Edit: there’s probably some interesting stuff here on where people think the anti-establishment view has been sufficiently proven.

Not sure what you mean by "proven true" here. As you mention in (4) most of those are culture war-y enough that you're going to have difficulty getting anyone to admit they were wrong, so it's unclear who you could even reasonably accept as the arbiter of truth. Obviously you're not attempting to be precise in your list of claims here, but especially thinking of (1) and (7), I could see coming down a semantic argument of your claims being true but the other side claiming they never disputed exactly that claim. I haven't been following (1) past the posts about it here, but for (7) there's a pretty clear difference between "veterinary Ivermectin is dangerous for human use due to it being too easy to get the dose way wrong" and "Ivermectin is dangerous"... and then you get into arguments about which claim was actually made. Similarly, I expect the mainstream response to (1) will involve a lot of "of course Twitter cooperated with law enforcement, what's wrong with that?".

The only news in 2022 on (2) I know of is the papers discussed on TWiV 876: Spillover market with Michael Worobey (paper links and podcast audio at that link), which were relatively strong evidence against the lab leak hypothesis (mapping early cases strongly suggests the market as the epicenter; details of the multiple spillovers strongly suggest wildlife origin... for reasons I'm not qualified to defend but that make sense to the scientists), so I don't know why you think it's gotten stronger over the past year.

I agree about shadow banning being proven true in 2022 . Twitter flat-out lied about shadow banning.

Lab leak. Well not proven but it went from crazy town to generally accepted as plausible or possible by most.

Proven plausible (as in, it cannot be disproven with available evidence) back in 2020, not 2022.

Masks work. Well maybe this is just pure culture warred at this point.

If you mean the "conspiracy theory" that they don't work, this was confirmed years ago. It's why initial government responses were against recommending mandates. It was only later, when they realised the psychological potential of making people wear a symbol of pandemic compliance, that policy changed.

Hunter Biden laptop. Not proven point is probably Joe directly getting paid. But that’s culture warred to death until the left doesn’t need Joe.

Proven back in 2020, not 2022.

Lourdon County school tranny (or fake tranny) rape case

Proven back in 2021, not 2022.

Ivermectin is horse paste that will kill you. Believe the government had to retract a lot of this lately and in court. Not sure this stuff works but wasn’t life threatening to take.

Proven back in 1987, not 2022.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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